Trump Opens Door to Revived Iranian Nuclear Program, Europe Confirms It's America's Bitch, and Israel and Saudi Arabia are Kvelling

Kvelling is Yiddish. It means "to be extraordinarily pleased; especially, to be bursting with pride." Certainly the Israelis and Saudis have reason to be. Both nations are eager for the U.S. to go to war with Iran, and have been pushing the U.S. in that direction for years.

Trump finally carried out his threat to kill the hard-won nuclear agreement with Iran. Two years of negotiations by the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, China, and Russia, all arrayed against Iran, with U.S.-imposed sanctions choking the Iranian economy, produced the best deal that could be squeezed from the theocrats ruling that nation. Iran surrendered ALL its enriched uranium, agreed to permanently shut down a reactor capable of producing plutonium, mothballed its centrifuges, and accepted extremely stringent oversight by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).  All this to last for 15 years.

If Trump wanted a better deal, he had plenty of time to negotiate one. But he has demagogically insisted for several years that the agreement was the "worst deal ever." A preposterous assertion.

The European "partners" (in reality, they're nothing more than junior lackeys to U.S. Imperialism) pleaded with and cajoled Trump to try to make him see reason, to no avail. French President Emmanuel Macron came all the way to Washington and endured demeaning treatment by Trump (Trump ostentatiously pretending to pick something off Macron's suit in front of the world press and announcing it was "dandruff," forcing Macron to submit to the insult) for absolutely nothing. Britain dispatched their foreign minister, the buffoon Boris Johnson, to Washington to pointlessly lobby various Trump regime apparatchiks on the matter.

Macron addressed the U.S. Congress, delivering a relatively honest speech which no doubt annoyed most of that body.

The Europeans are already caving in, reaffirming their status as the U.S.' bitch. This proves that the European Union is a bust. It was supposed to allow Europe to swing its proper weight. Instead it is a bad joke. The European bourgeoisie just cannot or will not free themselves from their position of slavish subordination to the U.S.

Trump has made clear that, as usual, foreign corporations must abide by U.S. "law" and conform to U.S. foreign policy. Just a day after Trump wrecked the agreement with Iran, which the U.S. got Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France, and the EU to sign on to against Iran, his Ambassador to Germany is already ordering German companies to shut down their Iranian business operations "immediately." Well, when you're the Boss of the World, you can issue such orders.

Unless companies want to quit the U.S. market, which is many times the size of the Iranian one, AND subject themselves to ruinous U.S. "fines," AND risk criminal indictments of the company and its executives, effectively confining those executives to their home countries or risk arrest and extradition to the U.S. to "face American justice" (decades in prison) for refusing to be agents of U.S. Imperialist foreign policy, these non-U.S. businesses have to knuckle under to U.S. diktat.

Some U.S. media "commentators" are fatuously saying canceling the agreement of the U.S. government was Trump "making good on a campaign pledge." As if Trump feels an obligation to keep his word on anything. And he made numerous pledges to snooker people into voting for him- all the good ones he has reneged on, only keeping the venal ones. (As I expected.)

Here are some choice excerpts that the bombastic  blustering bullyboy Trump spewed in making his announcement on May 8th:

Trump- "this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East."

He sneered at "the decaying and rotten structure of the current deal." (Reminds me of Adolf Hitler "freeing" Germany from the "shackles" of the rotten Versailles Treaty.)

Trump says the new deal he pretends he'll force on Iran "will benefit all of Iran and the Iranian people." (I'm sure he cares so much about the Iranian people! This is a guy who's trying to ban all Muslims from the U.S.) He wants to throw in "terrorism" and Iranian "meddling" in Syria and Yemen as part of new demands on Iran.

Trump threatens "any nation" that aids "Iran in its [non-existent] quest for a nuclear weapon" will also get slammed with U.S. sanctions.

Of course, Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons, it was developing the capability to develop such weapons. And right now, iran isn't even doing THAT!

But the lying jackass demagogue who is president of the U.S. Empire could care less about facts, as he has shown throughout his entire adult life. Nor did the U.S. media bother informing the millions who are forced to rely on it for information that what Trump said was false. For all their bleatings about his "lies," they reinforce some of his lies.

Iran now has to decide whether to accept being completely ripped off, having surrendered its nuclear program (mainly consisting of uranium enrichment) for nothing, or restart it. Trump is making gangster threats implying violence. Many imperialists in the U.S. and Israel, and the evil, medieval rulers of Saudi Arabia, have long been urging the U.S. to bomb Iran. (Dying U.S. Senator John McCain would love to see that.)

Iran's major commodity is, of course, oil. And since oil is traded on the international market in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. Treasury Department controls dollar transactions, that makes it extremely difficult for Iran to sell its oil without U.S. permission. So the U.S. has Iran over a barrel, so to speak. (One of Saddam Hussein's fatal mistakes was floating the idea of using a medium of exchange other than the U.S. dollar for oil transactions. The U.S. tends to react violently to impingements on its power.)

The Israelis and Saudis are eager for the U.S. to wage war on Iran, especially a bombing campaign. Terrorism ("covert action") would also be part of the war. The U.S. under Obama infiltrated Special Forces teams into Iran to plant surveillance devices, including radiation monitors disguised as bricks in walls, and spy gadgets to monitor truck traffic disguised as rocks. The Israelis of course were busily assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, creating terror to discourage Iranian scientists from participating in nuclear research. And Obama infiltrated the Stuxnet malware into Iran's nuclear program computer system, destroying centrifuges.

Understand that it is official U.S. policy to overthrow the Iranian government. (This would be the second time they did that, the first being in 1953, which destroyed Iranian democracy.)  The U.S. is still bitter that the client dictator it installed in 1953, the Shah, was overthrown in 1979. And while the quarter million Iranians who died under the brutal reign of the Shah are never, ever mentioned in U.S. media, they still reference the so-called "hostage crisis," when the apparatchiks in the U.S. embassy in Tehran were  seized and held for 444 days, and the U.S. media engaged in a daily drumbeat of hysterical propaganda about it. ABC "News" even started an entire evening program devoted to the "crisis," which became "Nightline," hosted by Kissinger maven Ted Koppel. What's never said, what has been consigned to the memory hole, is why Iran seized the U.S. apparatchiks. Obviously a key part of the story. But not in the U.S. propaganda version of it.

Iran warned the Jimmy Carter regime not to give sanctuary to the fleeing. Shah. Then Henry Kissinger called the president of the U.S. and transmitted an order from David Rockefeller, a man at the apex of the U.S. ruling class, that Carter must allow the Shah in. Carter protested that there would be bad consequences, but obeyed his master. (Carter was chosen to be president in 1976 by the Rockefeller-created Trilateral Commission, which assigned Zbigniew Brzezinski as Carter's "national security advisor." Brzezinski went on the engineer the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, something he has boasted about. Time magazine, an organ run by Trilateral Commission members, presented Carter to the American public as the second coming of JFK.)

Well, the "hostage-taking" duly followed the Shah's entry into the U.S., the resulting media-generated "crisis" ultimately cost Carter re-election. And the racist neo-fascist Ronald Reagan, running against Carter in the 1980 election, made a sub rosa deal with the Khomeini regime to only free the U.S. personnel minutes after Carter was no longer president.

Now back to the present. What of the non-U.S. lackey nations that are a party to the nuclear agreement with Iran, China and Russia? They too operate under the oppressive umbrella of the U.S.-controlled global financial system. [1]

And the U.S. has a veritable galaxy of laws, rules, and regulations that give it infinite power over the financial transactions of others. No bank that wishes to do transactions outside its home country's boundaries can defy the U.S. People and companies that have never set foot in the U.S. or done any action inside the U.S. are routinely indicted by the U.S. and either extradited or kidnapped to "face justice" inside the U.S. and ultimately be subjected to often draconian sentences imprisoned in the vast U.S. gulag. (The U.S., with about 4.7% of the world's population, holds 25% of the entire planet's prisoners. The U.S. imprisoners a higher percentage of its adult population- close to 1%- than any nation on earth. China, a country with four times the population of the U.S., has slightly fewer prisoners.)

The U.S. considers its laws binding on everyone on earth- and indeed enforces them. The railroading of the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was set up in Thailand by U.S. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents pretending to be arms buyers for  the Colombian rebel group FARC, and who now sits in a U.S. prison, is one of many examples. (What the hell is an alleged drug agency doing setting up fake arms deals to entrap foreign citizens? Good questions.) Britain has shipped hapless citizens to the U.S. to face bogus charges, to the outrage of its own media and public.

So what does Europe do when its arms are twisted by the U.S.? It says "Uncle!" Europe is paying the economic price for U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia to punish Russia for "meddling" in Ukraine. The U.S. has fined Europe's banks billions of dollars in a shakedown racket for violating sanctions on countries the U.S. doesn't like. (Other nation's banks have been hit too. See chart.)

But the cowardly bourgeois rulers of Europe are good at one thing: punching down. They sure know how to oppress their own people, as the corrupt Spanish government of the Francoist Mariano Rajoy is doing in Catalonia, or as the remorseless British Prime Minister Theresa May is doing, deporting tens of thousands of Commonwealth citizens who came to Britain legally decades ago and are now being reclassified as "illegal" because the British government failed to issue them documents when they arrived. Theresa May, the architect of the Grenfell Towers Fire massacre who slashed funding for fire and police protection starting in her previous job as Interior Secretary. (A job in which she began the targeting of immigrants.)

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the coming war between Iran and the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia. Iran is not completely alone. It is fighting side by side with Russia in Syria to prop up the murderous Assad regime. It also has the loyal support of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and militia. (The Israelis have been busily bombing Iranian weapons shipments in Syria they claim are destined for Hezbollah.) Every time Iran counterattacks, except the propagandists and governments of the U.S. side to shriek "IRANIAN TERRORISM!"

Israel has wasted no time lighting the fuse. Today they bombed fifty Iranian targets inside Syria, using as justification an alleged Iranian missile fired into the Golan Heights (former Syrian territory that Israel conquered in the 1967 war). No mention in U.S. (and other "Western") media that this follows months of Israeli bombing raids on Iranian targets inside Syria, with no response from Iran at all until now, with the alleged missile. (Or 20 missiles, as CBS later asserted. CBS is virtually a propaganda arm of the Israeli government in the U.S.) Israel threatened more to come if the Iranians don't take it lying down. Russia has expressed alarm over the Israeli pummeling.

This war, if it comes, will go on for years. Like some other wars the U.S. started in the region, eh?


1]  The U.S. isn't even satisfied with controlling the world's financial system. It even has to spy on everybody and hack into bank computers. Even SWIFT, the system for international bank transactions, was hacked by the NSA. (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication- SWIFT. SWIFT has cut off Iran's banks from the rest of the world, on U.S. orders.)

Favorite Targets the BBC Loves To Bash (Under the Cover of "Journalism")

After several years of monitoring the British government's global propaganda arm, the BBC (British Broadcasting Government), what leaps out at me are the following objects of hate at the BBC:

-The Venezuelan government, headed by Nicolas Maduro

-The Colombian rebel movement FARC

-The defunct secret police agency the STASI of the defunct nation East Germany (they just bashed this one again September 14)

-The defunct Soviet Union

-Russia

-Vladimir Putin

Now by "bashing" I mean gratuitous stories that are slanted and grossly unbalanced.

For example, in attacking the Venezuelan govenment, they never give the government's viewpoint, nor that of the millions of Venezuelans who support it. You ONLY hear those Venezuelans attacking the regime, and the foreign governments trying to overthrow it (namely the U.S.). Even worse, while constantly portraying the Maduro government as violently repressive, they have completely hidden the facts that the so-called "protesters" are in fact violent thugs who set fires, attack motor vehicles, burn cliinics, murder policemen, and have burned alive dark-skinned poor people who the "protesters" presume are Chavistas, based on their pigmentation and economic class. But that's not bad enough for the smarmy and dishonest propagandists at the BBC. They cynically add in the people, including police, murdered by the thugs the BBC portrays as brave oppressed people fighting for democracy, with the street goons who get themselves killed while committing felonies in the streets, in one total, which they mislead listeners and viewers into believing are all victims of government violence.  They talk about "protesters," then give a number of people killed to date, sneakily aggregating deaths on both sides without telling you.

NPR, a U.S.-government domestic propaganda network, is the same as the BBC in regards to how it "covers" Venezuela.

You don't have to be a supporter of the Maduro regime- I'm not- to see that this vulgar propaganda is merely a political operation to prepare public opinion in the U.S., UK, and wherever in the world people are stuck relying on the BBC for their "news," for the overthrow of the "evil" and "repressive" Venezuelan government, in the name of "restoring democracy."

Yeah, the U.S. and UK are so in love with democracy that both are shoveling armaments in the Saudi Arabian regime''s hungry maw as fast as they can. Saudi Arabia, one of the two most repressive countries on earth (North Korea is the other) is using those weapons to destroy Yemen. They are butchering its people, starving them with a naval blockade, and causing an uncontrolled cholera epidemic which has sickened over 600,000 Yemenis and killed several thousand already. All to try to put in power a so-called "president" who has so little indigenous support that like the South Vietnamese generals who ruled that ersatz country, are totally reliant on foreign military power to try and subjugate the populace. (One group, the Houthis, were able to put the fake Yemeni government to flight in Saudi Arabia.)

Western guff about "human rights" and "democracy," SOO cynically dishonest, has done much to discredit those essential concepts. Just as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and going down the scale of degeneration, the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia (or "Kampuchia" as it was styled when his psychopaths, the Khmer Rouge, ruled it) and Robert Mugabe in Ziimbabwe and others, have discredited and destroyed the very words "communism" and "socialism" with their cynical misappropriation of those terms for their own base power manias, so are human rights and democracy being delegitimized by the scumbag imperialists of "the West."

The BBC (and the entirety of Western power-establishment media) has been so grossly twisted on the question of Ukraine, and Crimea, that it merits a separate essay. Just coincidentally, an example of deranged BBC distortion of reality occurs as I write this. According to the BBC, Russia is now holding military exercises "close to NATO's frontier." In other phrasing, they "report" breathlessly "Russian military operations near NATO's border- is it cause for alarm." That is to say, inside Russia on Russia's own border. It just so happens that NATO has pushed itself RIGHT UP TO THE RUSSIAN BORDER. So now if Russia stations its OWN MILITARY INSIDE ITS OWN BORDERS, that is deemed to be a "Threat" to NATO! Amazing.

I don't like Russia, and Putin is a sinister autocrat. But I don't throw objectivity and reason out the window because of it.

But then, I'm not a propagandist.

In Surprise Upset, Egyptian Military Dictator Wins 97% of "Vote" In "Presidential Election"

Barely a peep out of U.S. establishment media about it. Which provides a stark and very politically revealing contrast with how they went on and on about the "so-called election" of Putin, just concluded. Putin ran against 7 opponents, and received 76% of the vote.  Sisi imprisoned and intimidated all of his opponents, and ran against a ringer who said he was supporting Sisi!

It's true that there were reports of ballot box stuffing in Russia. And the West's choice for Russian president, Viktor Navalny, was barred from voting. However there is no reason to doubt that Putin would have won in a fair election against Navalny, if by a less impressive margin.

Western media gave Putin another demerit for the "low" turnout of 64% in Russia. (It was only 40% in Egypt- of course that was lightly skated over.) I suppose the media hacks forgot that turnout in U.S. presidential elections is only 54-55%!

The elephant in the room here is how U.S. media barely mentioned the Egyptian pseudo-election, and the ongoing, horrible repression in Egypt. It is another example of the blatant, hypocritical, double standards Western media apply. The lack of objectivity is what distinguishes journalism from propaganda.

Payment Extracted From Russian Government for Liquidation of Aleppo

As the murderous Assad regime snuffs out the last pockets of resistance to its evil reign in the city of Aleppo, Syria, a 22-year-old Turkish policeman took it upon himself to impose a small price on Russia for its aerial bombardment of the city, including all of the hospitals. Shouting " Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria!" the off-duty cop shot dead the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, at "a posh art gallery" in the Turkish capital of Ankara. [1]

A video of the incident aired on Turkish media showed the man, a riot policeman named Mevlut Mert Altintas proclaiming in Arabic  "We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad." We see once again that it often takes a zealot or fanatic to have the courage (and indifference to his personal fate) to sacrifice oneself and attack into the teeth of Power. (Some reports say Altintas was killed. If not, he's in for some savage torture. For one thing, the Erdogan regime will want him to “confess” to “the conspiracy” that Erdogan and Putin have already posited led to this killing.)

Edward Snowden in a way fits the description of a self-sacrificing zealot, but of course his action was non-violent and very beneficial, if ultimately as futile as the assassination of the ambassador. But in both cases, at least some cost is imposed on the oppressors of humanity. That is worthwhile.

The day before the assassination, the Russian, Turkish, and Iranian foreign and war ministers met in Moscow to conspire on the ongoing crushing of the rebellion of the Syrian people against the despotic and ultra-cruel regime of Bashar al-Assad, an absolute dictator who inherited the dictatorship from his mass murderer father Hafez. (No slouch in the killing department himself. Like father, like son, apparently.)

With utter predictability, the state terrorist Russian president Vladimir Putin, Karlov's boss, immediately branded the killing terrorism, and vowed revenge. “The only answer to the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey must be the intensification of the struggle against terrorism,” Putin said darkly on Russian national television. “And the bandits will feel it,” he added menacingly. (No doubt to the approval of Donald Trump, who admires "strength." That makes Trump an authoritarian, of course, since fetishizing power is a key aspect of authoritarianism. But then Trump's authoritarianism has been on display for years, in his role as a Business Boss.) the Kremlin foreign ministry also weighed in with the"T" word, calling it “a terrorist attack,” I'd call it retribution for Russian crimes against humanity.

Showing he understands nothing, Putin also misunderstood the avenging gunman's motive entirely, even though the assassin said quite clearly what his motive was. Putin framed the killing in conspiratorial terms, seeing a “provocation aimed at rupturing ties between Russia and Turkey” in the act. "The crime that has been committed is undoubtedly a provocation aimed at derailing the ties between Russia and Turkey, as well as the peace process in Syria," Oh, undoubtedly. and I just love your "peace process" in Syria! Nothing like bombing people into submission to achieve "peace."

Yes yes I know, there are jihadists in Syria. But the 80% of the Syrian population that oppose Assad are not "jihadists" and "terrorists." This uprising began with street protests inspired by the Arab Spring, which started in Tunisia. The Assad regime responded by murdering protesters in the streets, and kidnapping and torturing people. THEN people took up arms, when they had no choice to defend themselves. Obama and his minions intoned "Assad Must Go," but Obama didn't want to support the rebellion with the necessary arms, especially anti-aircraft small arms, in part out of fear they'd end up in jihadists' hands. After a year or two, jihadists did appear in Syria, so Obama could rationalize, See? I was right.

The mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, hopped on the conspiracy theory bandwagon, opining that the killer's intent was to disrupt Turkish-Russian relations. Why not take the gunman at his word? He said, shouted why he did it!

I guess politicians, being cold, callous beings, cannot imagine that there are people motivated by the suffering of others. That is just beyond their ken. So they must fabricate imaginary conspiracies and convoluted political conjectures. (The U.S. media and other elite sectors do that all the time too. For example, J. Edgar Hoover, the now-deceased longtime FBI secret police chief, thought that the movement for black civil rights was a "communist conspiracy." And president Lyndon Johnson thought that the massive popular movement against his war on Vietnam was being created in Moscow! He ordered the CIA to uncover this "plot" that somehow turned millions of Americans into zombie puppets of the Kremlin. I kid you not. That is how blind our rulers are to their own criminality- that they have to deny any possibility of fault by themselves that is provoking opposition from normal humans. Positing malign conspiracies is one way rulers evade facing up to their own responsibility for the reactions provoked by their crimes and oppression.)

The destruction of Aleppo, which has included the systematic bombardment of every hospital in the city and targeting of schools, among other atrocities, is characterized as a "liberation" from "terrorists" by the cynical Russian and Syrian governments, rhetoric adopted by knee-jerk anti-Americans in Western countries whose human rights principles are apparently lower in priority than their need to assume that whatever side the U.S. opposes are Good Guys. This stems from their simple-minded, lazy habit of seeing the world in binary terms. (Readers of this blog will have no trouble discerning that I am unsparing in my criticism of the U.S. for its crimes. Those who cannot see other sources of evil in the world have a most peculiar blind spot) Even though the U.S. has been largely AWOL in Syria, these ideologues blame the U.S. for the Syrian tragedy. They also consider Hillary Clinton a "warmonger" for wanting to intervene. Had the U.S. supported the rebellion in the first year, the Syrian people would have had a fighting chance to free themselves of the gothically cruel Assad regime. A bombing campaign to destroy Assad's air force would have stopped the dropping of barrel bombs and chemical agents, for example. Russia only sent in its air force to assist Assad in his slaughter a year ago. (The uprising is now five years old.)

The Washington Post claims that "Russian authorities vowed to reveal a larger plot — and some [UNNAMED] in Moscow suggested that the West was to blame for its support of moderate rebel factions in Syria." Unlike how it treats with ridicule discussion of actual conspiracies by the U.S. Deep State, this fanciful conspiracy theorizing is reported respectfully by U.S. media like the Post.

"Putin stopped short of that, [i.e. of blaming the West] saying only, 'We need to know who guided the hand of the murderer.” That is, who to take out our rage on. [3]

There he goes again, with a conspiracy theory. As if passionate (or obsessive, if you want to put a negative spin on it) individuals need to be someone else's puppet to act. Not everyone on earth is a puppet or a puppet-master, Putin.

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan, already "knew" it was a conspiracy, and what it was about: “We know [sic] that this is a provocation aiming to destroy the normalization process of Turkey-Russia relations,” Erdogan said immediately in a speech he rushed to give. “But the Russian government and the Turkish republic have the will to not fall into that provocation.” It must be nice to be able to "know" things without having to investigate or discover actual facts. Makes life so much easier to just assume that whatever you want to believe is true. [4] 

Note Erdogan's repeated use of the word "provocation," a favorite word of Russian conspiracy-mongers that traces back to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and probably earlier. Do I detect pandering to the Russians?

Erdogan called Putin to offer condolences, and the two reportedly pledged cooperation against "terrorism." "Terrorism" being code for opposition to state power, including non-violent opposition or even just protest. That's also the U.S. function definition, by the way, as the FBI, DHS, et al routinely brand protesters considered "left wing," such as the Occupy Movement, "terrrorists." So see? Even enemies can agree on something!

Here's a bet, Turkish autocrat Erdogan will blame Gulen for the assassination, or else the Kurds.

One more thing. A single man, motivated by conviction, has imposed more of a cost on Russia for its crimes in Syria than the Mighty Superpower Tough Talking U.S. The U.S. has only jawboned and condemned Russia over Syria. It hasn't even imposed economic sanctions, as it did to punish Russia for interfering with the U.S. takeover of Ukraine. That speaks volumes about actual U.S. "values" and goals. It doesn't care one whit about human rights, self-determination, or freedom.

Unwanted politics intrudes at "a posh art gallery."

A minion of autocracy bites the dust. He won't be dining on caviar tonight.

1]  "Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov shot dead in Ankara," Aljazeera, December 20, 2016. Aljazeera quotes the gunman thusly:

"'Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria,' the attacker said in Turkish after gunning down the ambassador, as seen on a video shared by Turkish media from the scene.

"'Whoever took part in this cruelty will pay the price, one by one... Only death will take me from here,' the man said while holding a pistol.

"He then continued in Arabic, saying: 'We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad.'"

2] "Turkish police officer, invoking Aleppo, guns down Russian ambassador in Ankara," Washington Post, December 19, 2016. The New York Times quoted Putin in almost the same words,  but claims he made the remarks "in an emergency meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and other top officials." The Times version of the quote is  “There can be only one answer to this — stepping up the fight against terrorism, and the bandits will feel this.” "Russian Ambassador to Turkey Is Assassinated in Ankara," NY Times, December 19. The Times quoted the gunman as declaiming,  “God is great! Those who pledged allegiance to Muhammad for jihad. God is great!” The Post has him yelling, “We are those who pledged jihad to Muhammad!” Referring to Syria, he added, “Every single person who has a share in this atrocity will pay for it!”

3]  Washington Post, ibid.

4] New York Times, op cit. Funny thing, the guy who messed up Turkish-Russian relations was Erdogan himself. About a year ago, he had his jets shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber over Syria next to the Turkish border (the Turks and U.S. media falsely claimed or implied it was shot down overflying Turkey- it had strayed for a few seconds over the border but was shot down over Syria) because Erdogan was unhappy that the Russians were bombing ethnic Turkmen Syrian rebels. The Russians responded by cutting off the lucrative traffic of Russian vacationers to Turkey. This changed Erdogan's attitude, so he mended fences with Russia. 

Turkey's role in Syria is a mass of contradictions, and shows what a treacherous sea of boiling cross-currents "the conflict" there is. Turkey mainly wants to destroy the Kurds, which the U.S. supports in the Kurds resistance to Assad. But the U.S. makes distinctions between "terrorist" Kurds and "moderate" (i.e. "Good Guy") Kurds, which the Turks don't. Turkey for a long time supported jihadists in an underhanded fashion, allowing them to cross the Turkish border and obtain supplies through Turkey. Jihadists are U.S. enemy Number 1, or maybe Number 2, after Russia, these days, depending on which American ideologue/polemicist/apparatchik/or general you ask, and the day of the week.

Assad has shelled and bombed Turkish border villages several times, and Turkey semi-wants to see Assad gone. Russia is backing Assad in a major way, along with Iran, which has sent troops to help Assad crush the Syrian people, and the Lebanese "terrorist" (to the West) militia Hezbollah is also fighting on Assad's behalf. (Or rather it's the militia arm of Hezbollah, which is a religious/political organization and movement.) So U.S. ally Turkey, where the U.S. has air bases, is bombing U.S.-backed Kurds in Syria, and Assad foe Turkey is getting friendly and cooperative with main Assad backer Russia, whose air force is pulverizing rebel-held cities and towns. 

To make things more interesting, various Arabian peninsula Sunni autocracies- and the U.S. is good buddies with all those repressive monarchies, and supplies them with weapons and munitions and training- are funneling weapons and supplies to the jihadists in Syria-  the jihadists the U.S. wants to exterminate.. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are known to be doing this. 

But no hard feelings: the U.S. is currently helping the Saudis and other associated oil monarchies wage an aerial bombardment campaign of terror against Yemen. They've bombed 58 hospitals so far, with the jets the U.S. sold them, dropping the bombs the U.S. sold them, and flying to and from their targets with the aid of U.S. tanker planes refueling the jets dropping the bombs. And U.S. officers are in the Saudi command posts helping pick targets.

Is that all clear now?

Is Trump An Unwitting International Relations "Realist"?

"International relations" is an academic field, a subset of "political science," that deals with the relations of nation-states to each other and the system in which they operate. There are various schools of thought within international relations in U.S. academe. One is the "realist" school. Perhaps its leading public exponent today is University of Chicago professor John J. Mearsheimer, a military veteran and self-described "conservative" who was a protege and admirer of Samuel "Mad Dog" Huntington, late of Harvard University. [1]

Two things Trump has been up to create an interesting parallel to a strategic policy advocated by Mearsheimer. They involve Russia, and China.

 Mearsheimer sees China as the only potential competitor and threat to the U.S., a rising power with a population over four times the size of the U.S.' and a rapidly growing economy. China has been flexing its muscles in the South China sea and aggressively claiming ownership over the area. Russia on the other hand is a declining power, in this view. Mearsheimer sees the natural outcome of the U.S.-China power rivalry as a containment strategy, especially if war is to be avoided. He sees the U.S. as the linchpin of a coalition including Russia, Japan, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and others that will surround and contain China. We're already seeing friction between the U.S. and China in the region, and military feints and muscle-flexing by both nations.

President-to-be Donald Trump has been accused for months by the U.S. media, by Democratic operatives, and prior to the November 8th U.S. election by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, of being cozy with Russia and admiring of Russian president Vladimir Putin. This hectoring has continued post-election, by much of the U.S. media, and by Democratic Party poohbahs, accusing Trump of allegedly being "pro-Russia," "friendly" with Putin, even being a Putin stooge.

There is indeed evidence that Trump isn't interested in pursuing the anti-Russian policy of the Obama regime, a policy supported by the elitists of the so-called foreign policy establishment, a claque of unelected people who rotate between cushy seats in government, academia, and various foundations and institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, the latter functioning like a mother-in-law engaging in backseat driving to presidents and to the State Department.  These people keep accusing Trump of "praising" Putin, apparently because Trump called Putin a "strong leader." (These same carpers consistently brand Putin an "autocrat." So he's a weak autocrat? That's an oxymoron. Of COURSE Putin is "strong," if we accept the U.S. establishment's own insistence that he's an autocrat! That's just a fact. As a matter of logic- and admittedly logic isn't the U.S. blatherariat's strong suit- it's not necessarily a compliment. If I say "Hitler was a strong leader," I can assure you I don't intend it as praise. But let's posit that Trump admires Putin- I think he at least respects him.)

There's also much chatter about Trump's "business ties" to Russia. Evidence of Trump's "business ties" with Russia seem to amount to a lot of Big Talk about deals that never materialized. Trump does a lot of fishing until he finds a sucker to hook.

Stronger evidence of an impending "pro-Russia" tilt comes from Trump's announcement of his pick for Secretary of State: the boss of oil company giant ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson. (Rex by the way comes from Latin, and is defined in English as reigning king.) According to The New Yorker magazine website, Tillerson "has forged close ties with Vladimir Putin and the head of Russia’s state oil company." [2] Putin even awarded Tillerson a medal in 2013, the "Order of Friendship." ExxonMobil has a multibillion dollar deal with the Russian oil firm Rosneft to develop Russian oil fields. This relationship had the necessary blessing of Russian president (excuse me, "autocrat") Putin. (See my previous post for a partially-facetious photo essay on the Tillerson-Putin connection.) U.S. sanctions against Russia (punishment for Russian resistance to the U.S. takeover of Ukraine) have put the Rosneft deal in the deep freeze. ExxonMobil shareholders can look forward to the deal to be thawed out under the Trump regime.

We should expect that Tillerson will safeguard the interests of the company that is his sole adult employer and to which he owes his wealth, contrary to fatuous assertions in the U.S. media that OF COURSE Tillerson will put the U.S. "national interest" (whatever THAT is) first- and it's not just Trump partisans making that ridiculous claim. (I guess these people didn't notice how Hillary Clinton sold favors from her position as Secretary of State to donors to the Clinton Foundation, including a huge uranium mining deal. These propagandist shills will say anything, no matter how patently absurd, to shore up the perceived "legitimacy" of the corrupt U.S. power system.) Money talks, and billions of dollars is a very forceful voice.

Finally there's the ongoing campaign to blame Russia for Trump's victory with the evidence-free claim, now treated as fact, that Putin ordered computer hacking into Democratic computers and delivery of the resulting email caches to WikiLeaks to help Trump. Obama is now threatening retaliation. That needs to be the subject of another essay. Briefly, this ignores the fact that the archaic Electoral College allowed Trump to "win" with fewer votes than Clinton, and that the worst damage to Clinton occurred shortly before election day, when Republican FBI secret police chief James Comey revivified the Clinton private server "scandal" by announcing new evidence in the closed investigation in the form of more emails found on devices seized from disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, the man the media never tires of publicly humiliating for texting pictures of his penis to various women. Comey caused Clinton's lead to plunge from 14% ahead nationally to even with Trump. So the Democrats are scapegoating Putin! Similarly, after the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) stole the 2000 election, with five GOP agents sitting on the Supreme Court delivering the coup de grace, the Democrats ever since have blamed Ralph Nader. In that election too, the Democrat, Albert Gore, won millions more votes than George W. Bush. (Clinton actually won the nation by 2.5 million votes. Some "democracy." Just imagine if it happened in Russia, what the U.S. media would be saying!)

If it can be anticipated that Trump will pursue a friendlier policy towards Russia, on the China side of the ledger, Trump added minuses, committing what the U.S. establishment considered a gross diplomatic faux pas, namely accepting a congratulatory phone call after his election "win" from the president of Taiwan. This irked the Chinese rulers, who issued a public growl. U.S. establishment elite types added their own disapproving tongue-clucks over Trump's annoying the Chinese tyrants by seeming to call into question the "one China" policy of the U.S. by accepting the phone call. The "one China" policy means the U.S. recognizes China's claim to Taiwan as a mere province of China, not an independent nation as most Taiwanese prefer.

Trump, a habitual counter-puncher, upped the ante, saying in effect So What? The U.S. "doesn't have to be bound" by the old policy. To this China responded with a veiled threat of war, saying if Trump failed to hew to the one China line, it could "threaten peace." [The current U.S. policy is a schizophrenic one of recognizing China's claim to Taiwan as a mere Chinese province, refusing diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which it helped kick out of the UN to appease China, yet on the other hand maintaining a posture of preparing to use military force to protect Taiwan from China! If Taiwan is nothing but a Chinese province, like Florida is a U.S. state, by what right does the U.S. threaten to wage war to "defend" it from the country it is ostensibly a part of? For me, I favor self-determination, and loath repressive dictatorships, so I think Taiwan should be recognized as an independent nation. That is the human perspective on the matter.]

U.S. foreign policy and media elites wasted no time pounding on Trump to try and force him into line on the "established" -that is, preexisting- U.S. policy. An example popped up today even as I write, on the U.S. Government radio propaganda network NPR, on the program "Here and Now," (Dec 12). [NOTE: I ended up not finishing this essay until later.] The program's "security expert," an Imperialist named Jim Walsh, who heads the "Security Studies" program at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, broke it down for us. Walsh tsk-tsked that Trump wasn't getting the proper "security" briefings- i.e. being indoctrinated by people like Walsh. Opining disapprovingly on Trump announcing he's not bound by the "one China" policy," Walsh said, "it's been settled policy since Nixon;" a U.S. policy "for 30 years;" Taiwan is "a vital interest to China;" "normally it's a bad idea to threaten a nuclear weapons state;"  dropping the policy "could be a dangerous thing;" and "we should be trying to cooperate " with China on things like North Korea. Other NPR programs today similarly piled on Trump. [3] 

Jim The Security Expert would no doubt disagree, but almost all of that applies to how the U.S. has been treating RUSSIA over Ukraine. I say he would probably disagree because there is virtual unanimity in the U.S. establishment that Russia "caused" the Ukraine "crisis." But take each point: Ukraine is a vital strategic interest to Russia- it's on its border, and it has an absolutely vital naval base in the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine. Russia is a nuclear power. And the U.S. needs Russia's cooperation in Syria, among other places, and needed it to conclude a nuclear enrichment deal with Iran stopping Iran's program. But on one point there's a difference. The U.S. has  been consistent in its policy towards Russia. It has extended its policy of unremitting hostility to the U.S.S.R. to Russia. Too consistent, in fact. Sometimes Change Is Good. But the American bourgeoisie only think so when it's something BAD they're cramming down our throats, like job insecurity, "globalization," loss of company pensions, and soon the gutting of Social Security and Medicare, if they can. Or if there's some government they're peeved at and decide to overthrow. Suddenly "stability" doesn't matter and change is the thing.

Add it all up, and you get a friendly rather than hostile attitude towards Russia and a hardened stance against China, in line with the "realist" prescription of Mearsheimer.

Trump of course is too unschooled and ignorant to be consciously subscribing to the Mearsheimer strategy. He's probably never even heard of John J. Mearsheimer, or the Realist school of international relations theory. But his actions and attitudes have been accidentally dove-tailing with the strategy Mearsheimer advocates, at least so far. Ironically, Mearsheimer considered Trump unqualified to be president, but has deemed Obama "basically a realist" in the technical academic sense that Mearsheimer categorizes himself. This despite the fact that Obama has created hostile relations with Russia (by aggressively ripping Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence, violently overthrowing the democratically-elected government there using fascist mobs who set policemen on fire- you can view youtube.com videos of this- and sending in false flag snipers to shoot both police and protesters- and for good measure we had Victoria Nuland not just handing out cookies to "protesters" but publicly bragging about the billions spent by the U.S. to achieve its aim, namely subversion of an elected government, which the U.S. euphemizes as "democracy promotion," an Orwellian inversion of dictionary definitions of words- in a country that had a scheduled election coming up in months, where the president to be overthrown offered major concessions to the mob, which at U.S. direction it rejected) with Obama thus driving Russia into the arms of China. The entire Western establishment has dutifully followed along in this moronic and capricious strategy.

China and Russia already have had joint naval maneuvers and signed major economic deals as a result of the irrational policy towards Russia of the U.S., a policy driven by the hyper-aggressive imperialism of the U.S. The U.S. is a nation that won't be satisfied until it controls the entire planet, at which point it will move on to controlling other planets in the solar system. (Actually that's not even facetious. The U.S. military is already plotting to control the immediate space above the earth.)

Of course the U.S. will never achieve true world domination. It cannot dominate China, for one. For another, the world is too fractious to effectively rule, as the quasi-anarchic situation in the Middle East as well as in Somalia, Mali, and other places, demonstrates.)

The truth is, as boorish, ignorant, and improvisational as he is, Trump may accidentally end up following a far wiser foreign policy towards China and Russia than the "experts" have been prescribing! Who'd a thunk it! [4]

1]  "Mad Dog" isn't my sobriquet for Huntington. It was bestowed by his fellow imperialists during the Vietnam War, during which he offered his expertise in helping destroy Vietnam.

2] "Rex Tillerson, from a Corporate Oil Sovereign to the State Department," The New Yorker, December 11, 2016.

3] Another example from NPR,; John Hockenberry brought on to his radio show "The Takeaway"  a creep from the infamous secret police corporation Stratfor, an outfit run by veteran secret policemen that works to attack and delegitimize American dissidents, often using illegal means. The Stratfor ghoul pushed the line of the day, that Russian "hacking" of the U.S. election helped Trump win, which supposedly demonstrates a Trump-Putin Axis. (In the extreme version, Trump is a Putin puppet.) Trump of course actually lost- by which I mean he got fewer votes than Clinton. But the U.S. isn't a normal nation. Here, the loser "wins" if he gets more "Electoral College" votes, a bizarre creation of the slavery-favoring U.S. Constitution. Trump will actually be "elected" in December, when the 500-plus "Electors" meet in their respective state capitals and the District of Columbia to rubber-stamp the preordained outcome with their own "votes."

4]  That's not to endorse Trump. His other appointments have been truly monstrous. A racist for Attorney General, rabid generals for key posts wielding repressive powers, a pro-pollution climate science denying fanatic to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a man at Interior to allow a free-for-all looting of Federal lands in the west and mountain states, and the dunderheaded and corrupt former Texas Governor Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy, a Department Perry vowed to abolish when he ran for president in 2012. And Trump's bankruptcy lawyer, a fanatical Zionist who wants Israel to annex the entire West Bank, as Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. Friedman compares progressive American Jews to Jewish collaborators with the Nazis. Oy vey!

Trump wanted to out-Zionist Hillary Clinton during the campaign, promising to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The Palestinians can expect more suffering, and more death and destruction to be periodically rained down on them. Which is the say, the same they would have gotten with another President Clinton.

Just How Chummy ARE Rex Tillerson and Vladimir Putin?

Rex Tillerson, head of ExxonMobil, has done big deals with the Kremlin-connected Russian oil giant Rosneft. Sanctions have interfered with the business. Now that President-To-Be Donald Trump has chosen Tillerson to be his Secretary of State, (assuming Tillerson can get through the required Senate confirmation process), there is much worried fluttering in the media about the choice. The fear on the part of U.S. elites is that this is yet another sign that Trump will reverse the Hate Russia policy that the U.S. has had in effect for years, especially since Russia resisted the U.S. takeover of Ukraine.

The rap on Tillerson is his lack of diplomatic experience (which is a specious  objection, as it is routine for non-diplomats to be made heads of the State Department, not to mention to plum ambassadorships routinely go to richcampaign contributors) and that Tillerson has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which presumably means he will be "soft" on Russia.

Well, just how friendly are the two men? Perhaps these (genuine) photos can provide some clues. A note of caution: some of the captions may be less than wholly accurate.

Hey, I think they really LIKE each other!

 Looks like Vladimir knows exactly where Rex's funnybone is!

(And who's doing the translating here anyway? Does Rex speak Russian?) 

When two men come to trust each other, they confide personal things. Putin is reported to have said to Tillerson, "I get an itchy scalp. You're an oilman, Rex, are tar-based shampoos any good for that?"

Kickin' back in the Kremlin clubhouse, it's obviously not just about business for these two.

It's pretty obvious that Vlad is smitten with his new Best Bro, Rex!

Everybody brace yourselves for a jealous hissy-fit from the U.S. foreign policy establishment!

 

Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices

Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is a known swindler who stole $19 million from a Russian businessman. The businessman has been trying to get his money back for eight years now. He had to hire a private investigator just to try and find out where Manafort was hiding.

This is not some crazy "Internet rumor" or "conspiracy theory" from "a blogger sitting in his parents' basement in his underwear," as establishment propagandists like to sneer when they want to discredit (as distinct from disproving) some inconvenient information. This is from the Washington Post, an organ that sits at the apex of the U.S. bourgeois propaganda system. [1]

According to an article in the Post, Manafort and an accomplice, Richard Gates, swindled the Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, by tricking him into "investing" with them. Manafort's mark has been futilely trying to get is money back. In fact, the victim can't even get an explanation of where his money is from the thief Manafort. [2]

Manafort has long been involved with state criminals such as Reagan, Bush the Elder, U.S.-backed Philippine tyrant Ferdinand Marcos, and the recently-ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. You would have thought that this last bit of unsavory business would have occasioned loud denunciations in U.S. media, but naaah. What coverage there is is quizzical and faintly admiring. (Tells you something abut the moral and ethical sewer the U.S. elites inhabit.) Manafort was also a helpmate to Jonas Savimbi's terrorist UNITA, a U.S.- favored Angolan group trying to overthrow the government there until Savimbi finally met his maker. [3]

The curious- and damning- thing is, that despite the prominence and "respectability" of the Washington Post, the rest of the propaganda system has virtually ignored the story. This despite all the hand-wringing about what a disaster a Trump presidency would be. (One must wonder, given how the corporate propaganda system, which likes to call itself "the media," has been doing a bit of hand-wringing over the prospect of a Trump presidency, mainly over his unpredictability, and his failure to get on board the Hate Russia bandwagon. To the contrary, he apparently is quite favorably inclined towards Putin, and is suspected of having prospective business dealings in Russia. The leaking of Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks, proving that Hillary Clinton's handpicked hit-woman, DNC chair and Florida Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, deliberately orchestrated a campaign of sabotage against Senator Bernard Sanders' campaign for the party's presidential nomination, has been blamed, so far without any evidence presented- unless you consider the opinions of unnamed "experts" to be evidence, the few identified ones hedging their identification of Russia as the "culprit,"- this outing of information we are all entitled to, as it affects our lives, by being blamed on Russia, is adduced as more proof that Trump is somehow in Putin's pocket. [4]

It's quite natural that Manafort should wind up at Trump's side. Manafort is a scoundrel with a history of service to corrupt reactionaries, and Trump, even with his idiosyncracies, certainly qualifies as one of those. And both Manafort and Trump are rip-off artists, although from what we currently know, Trump is much more accomplished as one.

There's Trump "University," There's using Polish immigrant construction workers at a fraction of the normal pay, without even providing them hard hats. There's cheating his casino workers out of overtime pay. He didn't pay contractors who built his casinos, causing some of them to go out of business. (Great job creator you are, Trump!) There's fleecing banks by taking out loans and not repaying them.

Trump brags about his numerous bankruptcies. He presents this as a savvy business practice, gaming the system. In other words, he plotted in advance to go heavily into debt and declare bankruptcy,

That means he planned to rip people off by "legally" stiffing them for what they were owed. Contractors, workers, banks, and business "partners."

Trump almost never uses his own money. He started out using his father's money, then went on to using the money of saps who "invest" with him, and of dumb bankers. Conniving, corrupt politicians grant him favorable tax "abatements" (exemptions from what by law he would otherwise pay) and various regulatory preferences.

Trump doesn't even make his own charitable contributions. Others fund his "foundation," and his own "donations" over the years have consisted of letting people use his golf courses gratis for charity events, which he then takes a tax write-off on! He had the chutzpah a few months ago to loudly bray about a million dollar donation to veterans' organizations which he then didn't make, until the Washington Post forced his hand by exposing him. (Naturally he excoriated the Post for this terrible terrible deed they did!)

What I always found most stunning over the decades was how the New York City media relentlessly promoted this obvious egomaniacal hustler. The only exception was the weekly paper the Village Voice, which consistently practiced actual journalism and reported on his scams. [5]

There have long been creeps, immoral con men (Clinton, Obama), and reactionaries feigning a human face (Reagan, Nixon, the Bushes) in U.S. politics, but Trump is new in that he doesn't even wear a mask. The fact that millions of people are drinking his obviously rancid, poisonous Kool-Aid forces one to the conclusion that there are far too many imbeciles in America for comfort.


And America is a nation that threatens the whole world.

Slipping in and out of the shadows: Election manipulator 

and swindler Paul Manafort.

Paul is the PERFECT guy for me! 

1]  I am writing this from my very own home, and I'm not wearing underwear, I'm BUCK NAKED! Take THAT, bourgie propagandists!

The Washington Post has long been in a permanent rivalry with the New York Times to be at the very top of the media pecking order in terms of status and influence. As it is based in the capital city of the U.S. empire, Washington, D.C. (District of Columbia), it is also a sort of hometown paper for the the imperialist nomenklatura and national political elite.

Its editorial stance is consistently quite reactionary, unlike the New York Times, which is "liberal" mostly and reactionary partly. Its reporting is frequently quite ideological. The people who write it would probably be too self-conscious to do so naked, especially if they knew there were hidden cameras observing them.

2]  "Inside Trump adviser Manafort’s world of politics and global financial dealmaking," Washington Post, April 26, 2016.

3]  "Mystery man: Ukraine's U.S. fixer," Politico, March 5, 2014. The article bemusedly describes Manafort's disappearance, apparently to avoid Deripaska's lawyers, process servers, and investigator.

4]  An ideologue/apparatchik by the name of Anne Applebaum pushed this line very hard yesterday on "The Takeaway," a "public" radio show on government network NPR, hosted by John Hockenberry. Applebaum was miffed that people were paying any attention at all to the content of the emails instead of piling on Putin and leaving the Clinton machine out of it. How unfair that Wasserman-Schultz should be targeted. To Applebaum, the only story here is Russian subversion of a U.S. election.

Applebaum is an unreconstructed, career Cold Warrior, as her official bio on the Washington Post website makes clear. The way people like her have dealt with the disappearance of the organizing principle of their lives, the Evil Soviet Union, is by substituting Russia for the SU. Problem solved!

For an example of Hockenberry's journalistic ethics, see "John Hockenberry Illustrates Lying By Omission." To be fair, Hockenberry isn't all bad. He's more of a mixed bag. He "balances" normal, even humane journalism with reactionary crap and power-sycophancy.

5]  There are hundreds of articles on the Village Voice website exposing Donald Trump. And Wayne Barrett, who reported for the Voice for many years, wrote an important book about Trump, as have a few other authors. David Cay Johnston has also been on Trump's tail.

Financial Elites Celebrating Victory in Brexit Referendum Before the Votes Are Even Counted

It was still morning on the east coast of the United States- over an hour before noon, in fact- when word came over the radio today that stock markets and the British currency, the pound sterling, were rallying on expectations that the British public was voting for Britain to remain in the European Union in today's referendum. This giddy arrogance apparently was fueled in part by a private exit poll, asking voters how they voted.

Since the polls leading up the actual referendum were about even for quitting the EU (Brexit, British exit) or staying, I figured the vote would break for staying in, because people are innately conservative, by that I mean resistant to change. Change almost always feels riskier than the status quo, since one is exchanging the known for the unknown. Of course that's an illusion, since the future is unknown no matter what.

There was much demagogy by partisans on both sides, but mostly on the "stay in EU" side. British Prime Minister David "Big Toff" Cameron actually raised the specter of a third World War breaking out in Europe if Britain left the EU, a preposterous suggestion. (If anything forced the European nations to get along, it was being gripped in a U.S. headlock, economically and militarily, with the U.S.-controlled NATO military alliance putting them on the same side against the Soviet bloc, and now against Russia and as auxiliaries to U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East.) The most outré bit of fatuousness on the "leave" side came from former Tory mayor of London Boris "BoJo" Johnson, who compared EU unity to "unity" under Hitler and Napoleon, speciously equating military conquest and subjugation with a voluntary association.

The economic arguments were mostly overstated, on both sides, and avowed with far too much confidence. No one can really know with certainty what the economic future holds either way.

Nor was it a surprise that the "experts," who are virtually all in the pay of the financial or political elites, wouldn't sabotage their own careers by arguing for a vote to leave. I'm reminded of the saying, figures don't lie, but liars figure. I'm sure the calculations the gang of economic soothsayers came up with "proved" exactly what they determined in advance they were going to prove. Not worth the paper it's printed on.

Of course the Boss of the World, the current U.S. Emperor, Barack Obama, had to weigh in, with threats ("you won't get a trade deal with the U.S. for ten years if you drop out of the EU") and cajolings. He was followed by various U.S. imperialist poohbahs and financial elitists,uniform in their very self-serving opinion. (Opinion stated as objective fact, however.) I wrote previously on this topic,  [1]

Naturally the parasitic financial class, and large corporations, favor staying in the EU, because that is in their perceived economic interest. The Big Lie they always tell, whenever promoting their own self-interest (that is, always) is that what they want is good for everyone. Not only is this absurd on its face, but it has been disproved repeatedly by empirical evidence. Examples abound, such as the so-called "free trade agreements," which are actually corporate hegemony deals.

The populations of the "advanced" countries, as in the rest of the world, are divided into "winners" and "losers." The "winners" are people whose labor and skills (and sometimes connections) have significant value to capitalist employers. The rest of us are a dime a dozen, and can be had for a song.

In Britain, EU rules have obligated the country to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants from Eastern Europe to settle annually in Britain, driving down the "cost" of labor (wages) by increasing its supply. Working class objections to this are branded "racist," or at best xenophobic. The "lower" classes are not allowed to have their own economic interests, in bourgeois ideology, a totalitarian ideology that excludes all others from serious consideration. (The U.S. Government propaganda radio network NPR has gotten into the act, pushing the line that pro-Brexit supporters are "racist.") That somebody might want to limit immigrant without racism being the motive is excluded from consideration by the establishment media in both the U.S. and UK.

As for the economic arguments of the Brexit camp, these were dismissed by bludgeoning them with the deluge of propaganda issued by institutions of the financial oligarchy- all the usual suspects, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (those two notorious enemies of the world's poor and indeed nascent middle classes to boot, collection agencies for foreign debt holders), various "consultancies" and crooked major accounting firms that were essential in bringing us the mortgage crisis in the U.S. by certifying that billions of dollars worth of garbage mortgage securities were solid gold. {Rated AAA when in fact they were junk, a massive fraud they got away with scot-free. Yet these organized gangs of liars are treated as if their credibility is solid. The past never happened!)

The fact is, the EU is an anti-democratic project of Euro-elites, slid down the throats of the peoples of Europe. Loss of national sovereignty means even less control over their own countries- and lives- than before for the people. And making a supra-nation out of dozens of disparate nationalities with distinct cultures, languages, traditions, and histories, seems like a fool's errand. But maybe the European bourgeoisies are fools. They are enough alike one another that they can unite just fine. Dragging those they rule along with them has proven a bit of a chore.

One more note on the economics. With the EU long in the doldrums, the systematic destruction of Greece, and Spain still in a depression, with a quarter of the workforce unemployed, it takes a damn lot of gall to claim that leaving the EU spells economic disaster, and staying in guarantees prosperity!

Well, as to the referendum...

It would have been a nice rebuke to the self-designated Masters of the Universe if they'd gotten their comeuppance just this one time. Maybe they will, if the vote doesn't turn out to go their way as they've already assumed.

1]  "Obama Threatens Britons Over Leaving the European Union," April 22; "Obama Gives Another Reason For Britons to Stay In the EU: The Better To Spy On Europeans," May 2; "France Kicks the Leg Out From Under One Obama 'Reason' For British Voters to Reject EU Exit," May 4.

AND THE WINNER OF THE BREXIT REFERENDUM IS.....

THE USUAL.

[Boss Tweed, as illustrated by Thomas Nast. Then as now, political and economic power were cozy bedfellows.]